Exclusive Video Premiere: Robert Raimon Roy’s “Axela”

Exclusive Video Premiere: Robert Raimon Roy’s “Axela”

It’s all too easy in the digital age to become inaccurately fixated with what you idealize a person to be versus how that person actually is. (Users of OKCupid, Facebook, Twitter, basically anything on the Internet are all nodding sadly.) On Robert Raimon Roy‘s “Axela,” which BULLETT is pleased as punch to premiere, the Florida-based singer explores the duality through a piercing falsetto that fans of singers like Maxwell, Justin Timberlake, and Frank Ocean will love for the way it glides against the song’s languid tempo and skeletal instrumentation without lapsing into parody. “The song is about projecting the woman within on the woman without,” Roy writes in an email. “In this scenario, a real girl named Alexa becomes the illusory presence ‘Axela.'” The Lynchian effect is echoed in the music video, which is directed by Yelena Zhelezov and finds Roy exploring a black and white labyrinth in search of the woman—or at least the image of the woman. It also bears mentioning that he’s pretty adept at filling out a suit, too, if that’ll warm you toward a singer.